this question has been bugging me ever since the rules for 2012 were published.... why the hell did the FIA write the rules in this quite complex way with all the parameters when they could just have said: "the tailpipe of the exhaust has to be the last part of the car" (basically) ... teams would have had no chance to utilize the gases anymore and the chance of an expensive development race with all the coanda-solutions would not have happened...

is there any technical problem that restricts the exhaust going that far to the very rear of the car? or was it like a mutual concent between teams and FIA?

i mean, the idea behind the rule change was to help teams on lower budgets, that couldn't afford to develop EBDs - now the technical dept. at the FIA should have known about the coanda-effect, at least newey said the effect was more or less an aero-basic ... the FIA could have envisioned the upcoming development race, or am i wrong?

_________________How to fix F1:1. Stop seeking consensuses on rules - it will always turn out to be the least favourible option for everyone involved...2. Listen to the fans - there are plenty of them and they have good ideas...

I don't know that they wanted to lower the budgets. I thought that they wanted to forbid using EBD at all. The problem is that they wrote the rules in a way, that allowed the Coanda effect exhaust to emerge and EBD was (is) still possible. What is more interesting is that they did not do anything about it to "close" the rules (maybe they knew they f***ed up and decided to wait till 2014).

There were two parts to getting rid of EBD. The first was the change in exhaust location to keep the teams from directing the gasses directly into the diffuser, the other was to ban off throttle blowing.

With the ban on off throttle blowing, even with the coanda exhausts they were never going to have the effect on downforce mid corner that the cars had in 2011.

Until the days of the blown exhaust, the FIA didn't have any issues about exhaust exit. So the re-writing of the regulations was aimed at eliminating the blown exhaust. So they wrote the new rules, believing that this change would eliminate this form of technology. But Formula One engineers, being smart and creative, found ways to still use the exhaust energy to assist in downforce.

This is a picture of the exhaust for the 2011 RB7, it's right down on the floor, attached to it. So they figured, raise it up a substantial distance, and aim it up. That will get rid of it, right? History has proven it to be false, it wasn't entirely successful. Here is the specific regulation.

We have to remember that from first test, there was an incredible flurry of work behind the scenes, as each team had a good look at the competition, and made modifications at an incredible rate, constantly refining and improving the exhaust to extract more and more performance. If you look at the pictures of any car at the first test, and the end of the season, they have all been radically changed, and evolved.

Why not just have the exhaust exit at the extreme rear of the car? I can think of one good reason, safety. The last part of the car is the rear crash structure, intended to deform and die to absorb forces. Putting a hot metal pipe in that area makes it a very real risk from impact, and well it could harm course workers because of the high temperatures.The last thing anyone wants is an exhaust pipe penetrating another driver's helmet in an accident.

So what's going to happen in the future? The 2014 regulations mandate a change, where the exhaust(s) have to exit behind the rear axle, are up high, and contained within a narrow region very close to the centerline of the car. That should work, but you can't dismiss the intelligence and ingenuity of the designers.

Another reason to not have the exhausts at the rear of the car is that it would need longer pipes which would reduce engine power quite significantly.

i don't think that would be a really big issue - engineers said that they "gained" sthg like 20-30 bhp due to the elimination of EBDs as the exhaust constructions were really complex ... they lost sthg like 20 again for the coanda (i think someone from lotus stated that) ...

@Blinkysure they hoped for the "short exhaust pipe upwards"-solution - but apparently coanda isn't a very new and unthinkable solution for aero-gurus (i suspect anyone designing an F1-car to be such)... so the guys writing the new regs - at least - COULD have thought of it ...

if they wanted to leave this area open they could very well have left the exhaust position untouched and just go with the ecu-reglementation - would have helped cutting costs i guess..if they didn't want it open, they should just have gone with the 2014-regs right-away...

again: this is based on the idea that the coanda-effect is a very common and basic knowledge for aero-guys ...

however, maybe the fia should employ rory byrne to double-check the regs for loop-holes or just stop justifying reg-changes with cost-cutting

_________________How to fix F1:1. Stop seeking consensuses on rules - it will always turn out to be the least favourible option for everyone involved...2. Listen to the fans - there are plenty of them and they have good ideas...